Dawn Powell

“The artist who really loves people loves them so well the way they are he sees no need to disguise their characteristics-he loves them whole, without retouching. Yet the word used for this unqualifying affection is 'cynicism'.”

“It was not a jolly place at all for a sun-loving soul”

“There is really one city for everyone just as there is one major love.”

“A novel must be a rich forest known at the start only by instinct.”

“Hold fast to whatever fragments of love that exist, for sometimes a mosaic is more beautiful than an unbroken pattern.”

“Satire is people as they are; romanticism, people as they would like to be; realism, people as they seem with their insides left out.”

“I cannot exist without the oxygen of laughter.”

“The human comedy is always tragic, but since its ingredients are always the same—dupe, fox, straight, like burlesque skits—the repetition through the ages is comedy.”

“There is something more annoying than pleasant in finding neighbors from back home chiselling in on your own exclusive New York. It mitigates your triumph in having conquered the great city and brings home the ungratifying truth that anyone can do it.”

“All Americans come from Ohio originally, if only briefly.”